Even as the State government has begun a massive enrolment drive for Aadhaar cards among school students, pre university colleges too have now been roped for the task.
Along with school students, the government hopes to ensure that all the PU students in the State have Aadhaar numbers by the end of this academic year. As per the plan, the government is sending a team of representatives for generation of Aadhaar numbers for students at their respective colleges. The Department of Pre University Education has directed the principals of all PU colleges (government, aided and unaided) to provide requisite information of students for the purpose.
However, the ambitious project is moving at a rather slow pace as far as the PU colleges are concerned. The Deputy Directors of Pre University Education (DDPUs) who are monitoring the project at the ground level told Deccan Herald that it had not progressed much owing to lack of human resources and the machines used for generating the numbers.
According to the DDPUs, they are able to manage registration of only about 40 to 50 students per day in their respective districts. There are around 4,500 PU colleges in all across the state and they fear that this process would stretch for months together.
Requesting anonymity, a DDPU said, “There aren't sufficient number of machines. Also, unlike the BEO offices, the DDPU offices are short staffed and we are finding it really difficult to manage this enrollment drive.
Another DDPU added, “In my district there are around 350 colleges with 80,000 students or more. The current pace is not more than 40 students per day. Moreover, when the team goes to the college, the students are not always available. We are feeling that the project is too massive for us to handle with the current resources.”
At the State-level, the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan is co-ordinating the drive. PC Jaffer, state project director, SSA, said they would be making more kits available as and when needed.
“We have just started it only recently. We will increase the number of Aadhaar kits as per requirement.” Also, he opined that the challenges faced in Bengaluru required a different strategy altogether as the city had the highest number of those who had not enrolled for Aadhar.